This will be a short post for a long day. Kelly and I drove about 500 km and collected samples in some strong winds and sleet. There have been some real gusts coming through. Kelly is repackaging samples in the hotel bathtub while I send out these notes. Between the field laboratory in the bathroom and laundry drying facility in the bedroom, we have really repurposed this hotel room.
Leaving Höfn at sunrise, we retraced our path along the coast. We stopped to collect samples at the longest bridge of the trip (maybe 1/3 mile long), which spans a dry riverbed. It seems that this major piece of infrastructure was built for epic floods and little else. There were some big rocks up to 4-foot diameter, but most of the bed was 1- to 10-inch cobble. We also returned to collect additional samples from a productive site in one of the major outwash plains.
We got to appreciate some spectacular landscapes that had been shrouded in cloud on our outbound drive. I am also pleased to report that for about 3 minutes we basked in some direct sunlight. We made it as far as Selfoss tonight, and will spend tomorrow shipping samples and driving to the airport. Our hotel is near a big, fast moving river that has incised into a thick basalt layer.
